First the good news: Suddenly we have all the replacement motors we wished for.
Now the bad news: This is due to the fact that we only have one game-ready robot at the moment.

Originally we had planned to work on the “animations” and on our “walking” today and therefore had met at 10:00 this saturday. But as soon as we realized that we could not boot Atlas, we knew that the day would not be as expected. We do not want to speculate about the exact reason here, but by now we suspect that the mainboard from Atlas does not want to play along anymore. Unfortunately this is the second-worst part that can break on a Darwin, just right after the even more difficult to obtain subcontroller.

All this comes at the most inconvenient time one could imagine: only a few weeks before the World Cup. With 2 of 3 robots it would still be possible to compete against another team, however with only one player we could have the best program and would still not stand a chance.

Of course this is no reason for us to give up! Currently we are feverishly working on the fast acquisition of the required replacements and are confident to get them (with support through the department) in time for the World Cup.

Recently “Wheatly” was working hard to train for the Throw-In Challenge.
Currently he still has some trouble with his footwork, but the responsible physician Dr. Olli is confident that he will be fine after some loosening-up exercises.
Initial the throwing range was just about one meter, but after a few exercises and support by his trainers the range could be increased to more than 2.5 meters. Some exceptional throws even rolled just outside the field.
Of course we secretly filmed the training: